


Roses and Stones

by will_warin



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, florist/tatoo artist AU, if you want to you can see some bagginshield in the background, needles and roses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-26 19:41:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3862312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/will_warin/pseuds/will_warin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Talking to people is hard. Talking to people when they are still alive is even harder.</p><p> </p><p> <i>So, basically, I got drunk at grandma's birthday party and then really liked the colour of  flowers on dad's grave, so I decided to polish and post a thing.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Roses and Stones

When he arrives, the sun only just starts peeking from behind the horizon.

Thorin checks his watch in the dim light. He’s got an hour before opening, plenty of time for the trip back and well, ... everything here.

Sometimes, not being able to sleep is useful. Sometimes.

He takes the longer path, walking around pines and under willows, thinking about what he wants to say.

Not that it matters.

It’s a cold and misty morning and Thorin tries not to remember.

Not yet.

 

He finds himself slowing down as he walks up the hill, gravel crunching under his feet.

He remembers, with a sudden clarity, the sound of Frerin’s bicycle sliding on a gravel road when they were … 14 and 12. He was so afraid to go home, because _you are the big brother_ and _look after him_ , but Frer needed help and well, in the end it was only a long shallow scratch and Mum just looked at them and sighed and went to get some desinfectant.

Thorin smiles around the cold that has been clenching his chest since he woke up. He walks up the rest of the way and sits down under an old oak tree, hugging his knees and letting his hair hide his face. The flowers he brought end up on the ground, but he doesn’t care. He will put them in a vase eventually. But not now.

“Hi Frer. Sorry, it’s been a while.”

Now he has to stop feeling stupidly and irrationally ridiculous for bringing his brother roses.

They are dark red on the way to black and - Thorin picks the bouquet up to look at them -  
“You know, there’s a new tattoo guy in the shop next door, Bilbo. He’d say they mean hopeful forgiveness or eternal love or something. I just liked the colour.”

There’s more to it than that, Thorin knows, but the thing with the dead is that you don’t have to explain all the layers of _I know I should come visit more often_ and _but you’re not here anyways, so what is the point_ and _I miss you_ and _even though it’s been so long I’m not really sure what I’m missing anymore_ and _please can you come home?_ and _it’s ok, I won’t be mad if you don’t_ and _but I still miss you_ and _I brought you flowers because it’s the only thing I can do._

Thorin wishes he could talk to the living that way too. Talk to … Bilbo that way. Say one thing and let the rest be understood from the silence. He rubs at his forehead.

 

Talking to Bilbo is complicated.

 

“You would like him. Everybody seems to think so anyways.”

_I don’t know what you would think. I don’t know who you’d be. It’s been fifteen years and you were only seventeen._

 

In the memory, there’s a sudden movement to the right and an echo of a sound, metallic and loud. Thorin walking up and down the road, just to do something, anything, as the paramedics were doing their job.

“It’s alright, you had an accident, it will be fine,” over and over again, as Frerin, pale and shaken, but talking and asking questions, forgot what was told a couple of seconds later.

Head injury, Thorin knew, but finally, _finally_ , there was something to do apart from pacing the road.

A family from a nearby house came out and invited them all for a cup of tea.

Everything will be fine, Thorin almost managed to believe at the second mug.  
Everything will be fine, he said to Mum when he got out of shock and realised he should call her and tell her what happened.  
_Everything will be fine._

 

Frerin died of internal bleeding before they even reached the hospital.

 

Thorin never talked about it with anyone. He wished there was someone to blame, someone to shout at, but there was just a chicken, black ice and a tree. They weren’t even going that fast. The driver left for uni the week after the funeral and he haven’t seen him since.

Sometimes, there was a way Dís didn’t quite finish her sentences, or looked at him, that showed him her side of the empty space in their lives, but they never really said the words.

 

Well, he talked about it with Frerin, but that doesn’t really count.

“You know," he told him on his way back from a party ages ago, his knee still hurting as he had hit it while climbing over the cemetery wall, 

"it’s not _really_ because of you. It’s just. There were so many flowers everywhere," he waved in the general direction of the family grave, still drunk, 

"and they were so ugly. You deserved better. I know how to do them better, so I should do that, right? I never cared much about gardens anyways. It just sounded fancy." 

He spent several more hours there, talking and sobering up and when he heard the main gate being unlocked he went home and told his parents he was dropping out of Garden Design.

 

Talking to living people is hard.

Frerin would know how to do that. _Probably_.

 

But Frerin was a memory of a beer being pushed across the table when their parents weren’t looking and "just five more months and you can have your own,” when they noticed and four of the five more months never happened, not really.

Thorin’s head still hurts a little at how much vodka he downed with Dwalin in that time.

There’s a week he doesn’t remember at all around Frerin’s eighteenth birthday and a bouquet on his grave he remembers putting together way too well. There were looks from his family but nobody said anything. 

Dís ended up crying at his shoulder two days later, sobbing “ just don’t do anything stupid,” into his hair.

He didn’t drink so much after that.

 

And then, somehow, in the turns and twists of life, he has a plant shop with Dwalin, a cute new neighbour and a job of filling the empty spaces in other people’s lives with flowers. And he doesn't really want to hear about them. 

Not like Bilbo… around him, there is a story about every customer and every tattoo and every flower on his ~~body~~ … portfolio.

Thorin picks up the roses and sets to arranging them next to the gravestone.

“Sorry, I have to go, the shop is not going to open itself." 

He kicks absentmindedly at the acorns scattered on the ground. 

"And you know how annoying Dwalin is when he actually has to _do_ something.”

He smiles.

“See you.”

He takes the shorter path to the gate now, feeling light and hopeful in the fresh autumn air.

 

Missing Frerin is still a creeping cold hiding in the cracks and shadows, but his days are filled with job he loves and people he cares about (well, and some people he wants to throw through the shopping window, because _I don’t give a damn about your grandmothers childhood just pick something you want to give her already_ ) and … 

… and maybe, just maybe, he can find a way how to ask Bilbo about the meaning of dark red roses without being asked why.

**Author's Note:**

> If you don't know the awesomeness that is the [Needless and Roses (aka Florist!Thorin and Tattoo Artist!Bilbo ) AU](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/needles-and-roses-au), you're missing a lot of light in your life.


End file.
